Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

January 9, 2023

Duration

1h 39m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal, a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase: https://www.valuebase.co/. Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leaches off it. We go deep into the weeds on Georgism:

• Why do even the wealthiest places in the world have poverty and homelessness, and why do rents increase as fast as wages?
• Why are land-owners able to extract the profits that rightly belong to labor and capital?
• How would taxing the value of land alleviate speculation, NIMBYism, and income and sales taxes?

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

• Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3XbdnOI
• Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3CyfvbJ
• Website + Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/lars-doucet
• Follow Lars on Twitter: https://twitter.com/larsiusprime
• Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:11 - Georgism 00:03:16 - Metaverse Housing Crises 00:07:10 - Tax Leisure? 00:13:53 - Speculation & Frontiers 00:24:33 - Social Value of Search 00:33:13 - Will Georgism Destroy The Economy? 00:38:51 - The Economics of San Francisco 00:43:31 - Transfer from Landowners to Google? 00:46:47 - Asian Tigers and Land Reform 00:50:53 - Libertarian Georgism 00:55:16 - Crypto 00:56:50 - Transitioning to Georgism 01:02:30 - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment 01:14:46 - Big Tech 01:20:24 - Space 01:22:39 - Copyright 01:24:36 - Politics of Georgism 01:32:44 - Someone Is Always Collecting Rents

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lars Doucet

  guest

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Lars Doucet and Dwarkesh Patel, Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high explores lars Doucet explains Georgism, land taxes, and why rents explode Lars Doucet joins Dwarkesh Patel to explain Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George that centers land as a hidden but dominant driver of inequality, housing crises, and speculative bubbles. Georgism proposes taxing the unimproved value of land—and other monopoly-like assets—while eliminating taxes on productive activity like labor, buildings, and capital. Doucet connects these ideas to real-world phenomena: housing crises in both physical cities and online games, Norway’s resource policy, domain names, and digital platforms. He also discusses the practical path to implementation via better property assessment, his new startup to modernize mass appraisal, and how Georgism could reshape taxation, urban development, and even space settlements.

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